438 INFECTION AND RESISTANCE 



tant bearing upon this problem have been made by Weichhardt 26 

 and by Rosenau, 27 who have demonstrated the presence of organic 

 matter in expired breath. Rosenau condensed the moisture of the 

 expired breath of man and injected the liquid so obtained into 

 guinea pigs. After two weeks these animals were injected with nor- 

 mal human serum, and out of 99 test animals 26 responded with 

 symptoms of anaphylaxis. This demonstrated not only the presence 

 of organic matter in the breath, but showed at the same time that 

 such organic matter was probably protein in nature or at least surely 

 capable of acting as anaphylactic antigen. Rosenau surmises, there- 

 fore, that such protein may be slightly volatile under the given con- 

 ditions. He suggests that sensitization in this manner may explain 

 the harmful effects resulting from a first injection of horse serum 

 into patients, previous sensitization having occurred by close associa- 

 tion with horses. Surely it would explain logically the "cellular" 

 or epithelial anaphylaxis experienced by certain people in the pres- 

 ence of animals. In our opinion this is rendered more likely, since, 

 in the case mentioned as occurring at Stanford University, the in- 

 halation of washings (both aqueous and alcohol soluble) obtained 

 from the hair and skin of guinea pigs, and dried in Petri dishes, 

 produced absolutely no effects in the susceptible individual, whereas 

 continued handling of a living pig almost invariably caused such 

 marked effects that the person in question often became useless as 

 an assistant because of violent attacks of sneezing. It must not be 

 omitted, however, that not all observers have confirmed Rosenau's 

 work, and his explanation must therefore be regarded as merely tenta- 

 tive. 



An interesting train of suggestions connecting human pathology 

 with anaphylaxis has followed the discovery of "organ-specificity" 

 in the case of hypersusceptibility similar to that noted by Uhlenhuth 

 in connection with the precipitin formation and described in another 

 .chapter. 



It was shown by Kraus, Doerr, and Sohma, 28 we have seen, that 

 animals sensitized with the crystalline lens protein of one animal 

 species would react to lens protein in general, and not necessarily 

 to the tissue protein of the animal species from which it was taken. 

 In other words, the ordinary "species" specificity did not hold good. 

 Specificity was determined in this case by the character of the organ 

 rather than by that of the species. The same thing was shown for 

 testicular protein by v. Dungern and Hirschfeld. 29 The proteins of 

 these organs from various animals have therefore a certain common 

 antigenic property which is independent of the antigenic element 



26 Weichhardt. Arch. f. Hyg., Vol. 74, 1911. 



27 Rosenau and Amoss. Jour. Med. Res., Vol. 25, Sept., 1911. 



28 Kraus, Doerr, and Sohma. Wien. klin. Woch., Vol. 21, 1908, p. 1084. 

 2 * Von Dungern u. Hirschfeld. Zeitschr. f. Immunitatsforsch., 4, 1910. 



